I don’t remember how we got on the subject of vegetables, but the other day my friend, Barbara said, “I like all vegetables except rutabaga.” “Is rutabaga a vegetable?” I asked. “Not in my house, it isn’t.” she replied. Of course, Barbara is from Wisconsin, and everyone knows that the favorite vegetable in Wisconsin is cheese.

Recently, scientists at Cornell and Brigham Young universities have discovered that school children will eat their school lunch veggies if you pay them to do so. They found that providing a reward increases vegetable eating by 80%. For a long time “incentives” have been used with children to improve reading habits or manage behavior, but is it really okay to bribe a kid to munch on a carrot?  What ever happened to, “It’s in front of you. Eat it!”

Sometimes the definition of “vegetable” is confusing. For instance, a tomato is a fruit that is called, “vegetable.” In the mid-1980s, after Congress cut one-billion-dollars from the Child Nutrition Program, the USDA came up with the brilliant idea of labeling Ketchup as a vegetable. Of course, they thought no one would remember that tomatoes are a fruit. Only a kid who puts green beans up his nose to entertain his friends would want tomato concentrate on his Fruit Loops.

Onions make me cry. I have never cried peeling an apple---unless I cut myself---then I cry. My father-in-law told my mother-in-law (who was a gourmet cook) that he didn’t want her to cook any dish that required onions. I asked her, “How can you make all those delicious dinners without using onions?” “Easy!” she replied. “I tell him that it’s celery.”

The only vegetable my mother liked was iceberg lettuce. She would take a cleaver, whack the head into 4 wedges, and smother the chunks with Thousand Island dressing. Then she would command, “Eat!” That cleaver was my “incentive.”

President George H.W. Bush raised a ruckus with farmers and the produce industry when he said, “I do not like broccoli, and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And, now that I’m President of the United States, I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!”

Often people will not like vegetables because of how they are prepared. On the East Coast, people enjoy their veggies blanched (barely cooked). They call them,
“Tender-crisp.” Southerners will bare a shotgun, send those vegetables right back to the kitchen, and yell, “ Cook my greens until I can suck ‘em through my teeth!”

I have several friends who are vegetarians. They have taught me that lamb chops are not vegetables. Since I like these people, I try to accommodate their dietary preferences and have prepared many vegetarian dishes. While looking for vegetarian recipes, I came across a good suggestion by Jim Davis who recommended that, “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.”

Also, since herbs in the strictest sense are vegetables (plant kingdom), I have discovered that chamomile tea (a plant of the daisy family) tastes, “Oh, so good” when prepared with a dollop of honey and a shot of whiskey (a vegetable made out of grain).  Works for me!

Esther Blumenfeld (“Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?”) Anonymous